FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MAIL AND WIRE FRAUD - PAGE 2

(Repeats with new story label CRIME-REALHOUSEWIVES/FRAUD) By David Jones NEWARK, N.J., March 4 (Reuters) - Husband-and-wife cast members of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" reality television show pleaded guilty on Tuesday to mail and wire fraud conspiracy and bankruptcy fraud stemming from what prosecutors said was years of hiding income and lying to obtain financial loans. Teresa Giudice, 41, and her husband, Giuseppe - or Joe - Giudice, 43, face prison sentences and fines after pleading guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas in federal court in Newark.

A Chicago man convicted last month of mail fraud in Arizona has been indicted by the Du Page County grand jury on charges of selling stock in an allegedly nonexistent pay telephone firm to a Du Page resident for $70,000. John H. Jansen, 40, allegedly convinced the victim, identified as Michael Priolo, to buy the stock by falsely claiming he had a contract to install pay phones in Chicago Transit Authority commuter stations, according to the indictment, which was voted Wednesday and filed Thursday with the clerk of the court in Wheaton.

The prosecutor called him "a world-class master at using half-truths." The defense attorney maintained that he was simply "the victim of a lot of circumstances that he was not prepared to handle." During a full day of closing arguments Tuesday, the jury in Jim Bakker's five-week-old federal fraud and conspiracy trial listened to attorneys for both sides present conflicting portraits of the fallen TV evangelist. On Wednesday, the jurors are to begin deciding whether Bakker was a greedy criminal or just a minister who didn`t understand bookkeeping.

Was former Wall Street Journal reporter R. Foster Winans a hard-working but naive, financially desperate and vulnerable journalist who was victimized by an unscrupulous stockbroker? Or was he a shrewd, willing co-conspirator in an elaborate, illegal plan and an equally clever cover-up that involved stealing information that belonged to the Journal? Those are just two of the questions facing U.S. District Court Judge Charles E. Stewart Jr. as he sorts through 20 days of courtroom testimony here in the criminal fraud trial of Winans and two others.

By Nicholas Horrock, a member of The Tribune`s Washington bureau | December 29, 1985

In May, 1985, E.F. Hutton Company, the nation's second largest brokerage firm and one of the best known to the public, pleaded guilty to some 2,000 counts of mail and wire fraud, paid a fine of $2.7 million (including costs) and agreed to make restitution to banks that the government said were victims of the fraud. The company admitted operating a scheme that obtained $10 billion in interest-free loans from dozens of banks from 1980 to 1982 by systematically overdrawing its bank accounts and purposely delaying the clearing of its checks.

Brain surgery, anyone? Just slip on a hospital gown and step into my operating cubicle here at the Tribune. Let me clear my desk of printouts, unwashed coffee cups and old newspapers so you can stretch out. Comfy? Now, I'll need a tool sharp enough to crack open your skull. Scissors might work, if I hammer on them with my shoe. There, there. Trust me. I'm a doctor -- or I will be as soon as I fork over my medical school tuition. Recently, I received approval for a series of bogus academic credentials, including a "Doctorate Degree in Medicine & Surgery" from a diploma mill called Ashwood University.

A federal judge Monday ignored the plea of a tearful Debra Hartmann that "I did not want my husband dead," and sentenced the former exotic dancer to 22 years in prison for conspiracy in the machine-gun slaying of her millionaire husband. Prosecutors branded the woman the "proverbial black widow." In an unusual move, Hartmann, 36, was allowed to address U.S. District Judge James Moran in his chambers, away from the eyes of the media and courtroom spectators, to present her side of the June 8, 1982, murder of Werner Hartmann.

- A federal court in Los Angeles ruled that United Airlines and American Airlines may be tried on charges of mail and wire fraud in connection with their computer reservations systems. The ruling paves the way for a jury trial on Continental Airlines` $1 billion claim filed against the two carriers in September, 1985, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

West Virginia placed E.F. Hutton & Co. Inc. on a year's probation and ordered the brokerage firm to pay $10,000 to cover costs of a state investigation of cash management abuses. The state actions grew out of Hutton's guilty plea last year to 2,000 counts of federal mail and wire fraud.